


Oblations and Amends (Whumptober 2020 #9)

by Jadelyn



Series: Whumptober 2020 [9]
Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Blood and Gore, Cults, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Apologizes, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Human Sacrifice, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Torture, Vivisection, Whumptober 2020, Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg Ships It, hints of polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:20:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadelyn/pseuds/Jadelyn
Summary: "You want to give your victim a slow and painful death?" Geralt asks - no, challenges the man. "Then you want me, not him. He's only human. I'm a witcher. I'll take a lot longer to die." He gives the cultist a terrifying, reckless grin, an expression Jaskier has never seen on that beloved face before and never wants to see there again, and opens his arms a little in a gesture half-challenge, half-enticement. "I can endure much more than a human can before my body shuts down. Better for your ritual, wouldn't you say?"When Geralt passes through a rural town two years after the mountain and sees Jaskier's lute with no Jaskier in sight, only to have his questions met with lies and evasions, he knows something must have happened.  His investigation turns up whispers about a god and a sacrifice, and he follows the whispers to find Jaskier already tied to the altar and about to be killed by the leader of the town's cult.  When the cult leader explains that Jaskier is to be a sacrifice to their god of suffering, offered up through a slow and torturous death to sate the Lord of Suffering and spare the town his attentions, Geralt offers them an alternative.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Whumptober 2020 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953790
Comments: 15
Kudos: 196





	Oblations and Amends (Whumptober 2020 #9)

**Author's Note:**

> Please, heed the tags. There is graphic torture described in a fair bit of detail in this fic (though everyone survives). If you want to avoid that bit, skip the section starting "The fucking knife is dull." and pick back up at the following section where it begins "Jaskier tumbles out of the portal". 
> 
> For the prompt: No 9. FOR THE GREATER GOOD  
> "Take Me Instead" | "Run!” | Ritual Sacrifice

If Jaskier had seen this scene in a play he would have rolled his eyes at the playwright and dismissed it as heavy-handed and overly theatrical. He’d have insisted that no one in real life would ever do something so ridiculously over the top, and that’s coming from a bard, of all people.

Lying chained and naked on the cold stone altar, surrounded by candles and people in fucking _robes_ , of all things, actually literally _chanting_ as their leader raises a terrifyingly large knife over Jaskier’s defenseless belly…at this precise moment he would be more than prepared to eat his words and offer a public apology to every single playwright who has ever penned a ridiculous ‘cult’ scene if it would get him out of this awful parody of one.

The knife comes down, slowly, taunting him. Jaskier closes his eyes, feeling tears leak from beneath his lids and slide down his temples into his hair.

Suffice to say, this is not how he’d imagined his end.

There’s a crash, then, and a scream. The chanting stops. And clearly the terror has gotten to his head, because Jaskier could swear he hears a voice straight from his dreams shout, “Stop!”

When silence falls and no knife pierces his skin, Jaskier dares to crack an eye open to see what exactly the holdup is. Not that he’s eager to die or anything, but if it’s going to happen he’d much rather get it over with.

The leader of the cult is standing over him, still holding the knife, but staring past him at the far end of the cavern as though frozen. Brow furrowing, Jaskier turns his head and follows the mad bastard’s gaze.

“What the fuck?” he mumbles, barely aware of his own words leaving his lips.

Because that voice he had assumed had to be a terror-induced hallucination was real. Geralt, fucking Geralt of fucking Rivia is standing there with a sword in hand and a dangerous look in his eyes.

It’s funny, he thinks hazily. After two years apart, he might’ve thought there would be some change, anything, no matter how tiny. But no, here Geralt is, looking as though he might’ve just walked down from Niedamir’s mountain and straight into this unholy cavern. Every detail, as though he’s been brought to life directly from Jaskier’s memory.

That burning golden gaze pierces Jaskier for a brief moment, and he could almost swear he sees something else underneath the barely-contained fury in them. Fear? Almost desperation. What could Geralt have to fear here? Jaskier wonders. Sure, the cavern is full of dozens of people, but they’re all village folk. No soldiers or guards. No one that would pose a real threat.

Then Geralt looks up past him to the man standing over him and his expression turns icy and murderous. “Let him go,” he says.

It’s not a request.

* * *

Geralt always finds himself plagued by thoughts of Jaskier when he walks into a tavern.

It’s why he doesn’t go into them very often anymore. Not for the last two years, not since the day he lost his temper and lashed out at the most important person in his life and drove him away for good.

But it’s been a hard road of late, and Roach could use a proper break at least for an hour or two, in an actual stable out of the sun. And if they’re stopping anyway, he might as well go see if they’ll serve him an ale and maybe something to eat.

Though even that reminds him of Jaskier, and how he always wanted to stop, how often he would bully Geralt into allowing himself small pleasures like a drink he didn’t, strictly speaking, need. It doesn’t seem to matter how steadily time marches on, Jaskier’s absence haunts him endlessly nonetheless.

That line of thought makes him wonder, when he sees the lute propped against the wall behind the bar, if perhaps he’s just started outright hallucinating. He starts a mental inventory of the potions he’s taken recently and any venom he might have been exposed to, trying to work out if there’s some kind of odd interaction that might produce hallucinations, but there’s been nothing out of the ordinary lately. Certainly nothing that would explain such a specific, selective apparition as Jaskier’s lute showing up in the tavern of a random town he happens to be passing through. So…perhaps it’s real.

He clears his throat. “Barman,” he says, and when the man turns and looks at him Geralt nods toward the lute. “That instrument. How’d you come by it?”

The barman turns unexpectedly pale. His heart begins to race and his sweat carries the sour tang of fear. And sure, Geralt is used to that kind of reaction when he talks to humans, but this seems...excessive.

And he hadn’t been like that when Geralt first walked in, or when he ordered food and drink. No, this is specifically a response to his interest in the lute.

Tamping down on the urge to draw steel and demand answers, Geralt waits while the barman spins some obvious lie about his wife's cousin visiting and leaving it behind. Even if he'd been merely human he'd have been able to tell the man was lying. Poor bastard is a terrible liar: trembling, sweat beading on his face, licking his lips, eyes darting about, stammering.

Geralt considers pushing the issue, until he realizes that the barman's roving eyes keep landing in the same place with an almost pleading look. Concentrating, he can hear three heartbeats behind him, all slightly elevated.

So not only is the barkeep terrified of Geralt's interest in the lute and desperately lying about how it got there, he isn't the only one with an interest in the outcome of this conversation.

What the fuck has Geralt just stumbled into the middle of?

But he needs more information before he can decide what to do about it, so he nods as though accepting the barman's shitty lie,and when the man nervously asks why he was interested, Geralt shrugs.

"It looked similar to an instrument owned by…" _a friend,_ "an associate of mine," he answers.

The heartbeats behind him pick up sharply. So does the barman's. They've seen Jaskier, then, and are afraid of someone with ties to him showing up and asking after him.

Geralt barely stifles a growl. Whatever they've done had better not be anything he can't undo, or what he will unleash upon this village will put Blaviken to shame.

Still, he's not going to get anything more useful from the barman right now. So he drops the subject, finishes his meal, and continues on out of town as though nothing is wrong.

And if he circles back as soon as he's out of sight, settling into the woods nearby to wait for nightfall, none of the townsfolk need to know.

* * *

The barman barely waits for the evening rush to die down before he's out the back door and all but sprinting for the alderman's house. Geralt follows, a shadow among shadows, and conceals himself beneath a conveniently-placed window to listen to their conversation.

"We may have a problem, Michal."

"What's that?"

"There was someone in my tavern this afternoon asking about the bard. A witcher. Scary eyes, big swords. He recognized the bard's instrument, asked me how I got it."

"What did you tell him?"

"That my wife's cousin left it behind after a visit and we're holding on to it to return next time he's here."

"Did he believe you?"

"I don't know. Maybe? He didn't ask again, just finished his food and left. Must have just been passing through."

"Then we should be fine. The sacrifice is tomorrow night anyway, and once we've secured Oizys's favor for another year it won't matter if the witcher comes back. Our tithe will be paid and he will protect us."

_Sacrifice?_

Oh, _fuck_ no.

Geralt barely hears the rest of their conversation, too shaken by the implications.

Tomorrow night. He has one day to find Jaskier before…

Well. With any luck, they won't have to find out what happens after.

* * *

He catches a hint of Jaskier's scent a few times as he prowls through the village that night. Once near the tavern, once near the alderman's house, and once - oddly - near the shared smokehouse on the outskirts of the village to the east, though it's hard to pick Jaskier's scent out from that of the pungent smoke and cured meats hanging inside. Odd hiding spot for a tryst, he thinks, but on the Jaskier scale of spontaneous sexual escapades it barely rates a mention, so he moves on.

Frustratingly, though, none of those scents _lead_ anywhere. He looks for tracks, scents the air from one end of the village to the other, breaks into the alderman's house to rifle through his office and see if he can find anything referencing either this 'sacrifice' or Oizys, but nothing bears any result.

Geralt grows more desperate as the night wears on. He can't let them know he's still here, lest they accelerate their plans for Jaskier or take steps to secure him so that Geralt can't get him out once he finds him. And to avoid detection he'll have to retreat to the woods come daylight, making it all the more imperative that he find something, _anything_ now - but still there's nothing, nothing, nothing. Save for the lute and a half-caught scent on the air, it's as though Jaskier has completely vanished.

He slinks away as the sun rises and people rise with it. His failure tastes sharp and coppery, like blood in his mouth. He'll have to find another way.

* * *

Geralt shadows the alderman as best he can the next day, and he does hear people mentioning 'tonight' and 'the ritual'. But he repeatedly runs into the problem that so often arises when you attempt to listen in on a conversation between compatriots: namely, since they already know one another and the subject matter is familiar to them all, there's no need to lay out the particulars or give context for the benefit of confused eavesdroppers. In the end he winds up knowing precisely nothing more than he'd already gleaned and has to extricate himself from the village before he's spotted.

Time is running out. It's nearly sunset. Closing in on an hour that could reasonably be considered 'tonight'. Meaning that the 'ritual' and its associated sacrifice could begin at any moment. And he _still doesn't know where the fuck Jaskier is._

* * *

He's lurking again near the northern edge of the village, relying on the gloaming dusk to hide his presence, when he suddenly realizes that the village has gone strangely quiet. Geralt risks coming a little closer, then closer still when he doesn't encounter anyone at all. By the time he reaches the utterly silent and empty town square, his skin is crawling with the wrongness of it all. A village of a couple hundred people doesn't just _vanish_ like this. No rustling of breath, no muted thudding of heartbeats. The village is as silent and deserted as if it had never been inhabited at all.

Geralt stands, despair and panic trying to claw their way out of his chest, because if he can't find anyone then how the fuck is he supposed to be able to figure out where Jaskier is? How the fuck is he supposed to be able to rescue him before these people use him as some kind of ritual sacrifice?

There's a distant creak and a muffled thump from the eastern side of the village.

He _runs_.

* * *

Geralt slips through the hidden door in the smokehouse, carelessly left cracked open by the late straggler he'd heard. Down a hewn stone staircase, through a tunnel, cracking open another door to peer through while still staying hidden, and then -

The cavern is huge, and packed with people. Every single villager is present, dressed in ritual robes, and their chanting is a susurrus that presses on his senses like a physical thing.

It all falls away in an instant when he looks out across the cavern and sees the crude stone altar, Jaskier helpless upon it, and the fucking alderman bringing a bloodstained bronze blade slowly down toward Jaskier's unprotected flesh.

Geralt throws the door open with his full strength, fueled by panic. Someone nearby screams as it shatters against the rock wall upon impact, and the chanting stops. He draws his sword as he steps into the room, unable to look away from the awful tableau at the heart of it, and shouts loud enough for the word to ring in echo from the walls:

"Stop!"

* * *

Jaskier lays still on the stone slab and watches as Geralt’s eyes dart about the cavern, marking his surroundings the way Jaskier has seen him do dozens of times before a fight. Noting where his opponents are, environmental factors that could obstruct or be useful in some way. But that scan doesn’t seem to make him any more confident; in fact, he blanches, his already pale skin turning almost grey. Jaskier doesn’t understand why, until he realizes that Geralt is looking down -

Oh. The _entire_ village is here. Including the children.

Well, Jaskier thinks, that seals it. Geralt could never cut his way through a crowd that includes children. Ever. And Jaskier wouldn't want him to. A Geralt who could kill children, even to save someone he cared about (assuming he did care about Jaskier, evidence notwithstanding), wouldn't be the Geralt that Jaskier has spent the last twenty-five years in love with.

It's all right, really, Jaskier thinks. At least he got to see Geralt one more time, before the end. At least he'll have this memory to take with him, his last sight of his beloved friend not the pain and anger of the mountaintop, but this: sword in hand, ready to protect and defend or die trying. It's a much better memory to go out to. Jaskier blinks away tears and keeps his eyes on his witcher, steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the blade hovering over his vital organs.

"I can't do that." The cult leader's voice sounds almost genuinely apologetic. "This ritual - we need this ritual to protect ourselves, to keep ourselves and our families safe."

"Why?" Geralt's voice is harsh and raw-sounding. "What is it you need protection from? If there's some creature or power hunting your people, I can help. You don't have to do this." There's an odd, almost pleading note to his voice as he speaks this last.

But the cultist says, "Can you protect us from the tides of suffering that encompass this world? Not a single creature, but the very nature of existence?"

"And you think this will?" Geralt gestures, encompassing the entire awful situation. "How does this protect you from all suffering?"

"We appease Oizys, the Lord of Suffering, through sacrifice. We offer one person's suffering to him bearing the weight of all the pain we wish to be spared, and in return, if the sacrifice is good enough, he will protect the rest of us."

The blade is laid flat across Jaskier's belly, and he jolts at the touch of it until he realizes it was only set down and not cutting into him. The cultist's hand comes down to rest on his chest in a caress that's disturbingly proprietary.

"When this one came through our town some days past," the cultist continues, "we knew he would make the perfect sacrifice. It was his voice - he sang for us, and we knew he would sing even more beautifully for Oizys. Surely, the sounds of his screams will be enough for a worthy sacrifice."

Jaskier can't breathe. _One person's suffering…all the pain we wish to be spared…the sounds of his screams…_

They weren't just planning on killing him. They were planning to _torture him to death._

He watches as the same horrified realization dawns over Geralt's face, only to be followed by something calm and calculating. Jaskier frowns. What is he…?

Geralt lowers his sword and takes a step closer. "The key to this sacrifice is the suffering endured in the process of the victim's death?" His voice is eerily flat, making Jaskier shiver.

"Yes," the cultist answers. "An unfortunate, but necessary, part of the process in order to make a sacrifice worthy of earning the protection of Oizys."

Another step closer. "Then take me instead," Geralt says quietly.

"What?" Jaskier whispers. Surely he can't have heard that right.

His incredulous response is echoed by the man standing over him.

"You want to give your victim a slow and painful death?" Geralt asks - no, challenges the man. "Then you want me, not him. He's only human. I'm a witcher. I'll take a lot longer to die." He gives the cultist a terrifying, reckless grin, an expression Jaskier has never seen on that beloved face before and never wants to see there again, and opens his arms a little in a gesture half-challenge, half-enticement. "I can endure much more than a human can before my body shuts down. Better for your ritual, wouldn't you say?"

Jaskier can feel the cultist's hand on his chest, fingertips digging into the muscle as he mulls it over. He feels as though he's choking on his own breath. His tongue is frozen, a useless block of ice keeping the words trapped in his throat.

"And you offer this…freely?" the man asks, sounding baffled.

Geralt nods. "On the condition that you release him, yes. Let him go. I'll take his place."

"Very well," the cultist says. "I accept your bargain."

Hearing that unlocks Jaskier's voice. "No," he whispers, then shouts it. "No!" He yanks at the bindings as though he could somehow stop this if only he could get between them physically. "Geralt, no, stop. This is madness. You can't do this!"

The bastard doesn't react, doesn't even look at him. The villagers part, clearing a path for Geralt to approach the altar. He keeps his movements slow and his sword down by his side, held in a loose and nonthreatening grip. His face has gone devoid of all expression.

There are hands on Jaskier, undoing the manacles that had kept him trapped. He doesn't know whose they are, and he doesn't care. He surges up the instant he's free, but the hands tighten on him and drag him back. Still Jaskier can't help but fight them, mindlessly; the only thought in his mind is a picture of Geralt, lying upon the altar, golden eyes blank and empty in death. The mental image makes his stomach churn and lends his limbs strength.

It's not enough to break free of his captors. He's manhandled into a loose pair of pants and a tunic, and then they're hauling him away, and Geralt still won't even fucking look at him and…

"Wait."

Everything goes still, even Jaskier. Geralt sets his sword on the ground, then reaches up and pulls the chain of his medallion over his head.

"Give him this," he says to the leader, who has kept himself positioned between Geralt and Jaskier. As the cultist approaches and pushes the silver disk into Jaskier's hand, Geralt finally looks at him.

Had Jaskier thought the witcher's face empty of emotion? Geralt meets his gaze steadily and his gold eyes blaze with a depth of feeling even Jaskier's poet's soul struggles to comprehend.

"Take that to Yspaden," Geralt says quietly. "Speak with the barkeep at the White Crow, he'll let Vesemir know to come find you next time he's in town for supplies. Give that to him," he nods at the medallion, clutched so tightly in Jaskier's fist that the skin is going white where the edges dig into his palm, "and tell him what happened. Please."

"Geralt," Jaskier says weakly, "please, don't…don't do this, I can't…" Tears stream down his face, feeling like fire against his skin.

There's an awful gentleness in Geralt's voice. "I left Roach in the woods north of here. Take her and…just get away from here, Jaskier." He swallows hard. "Go, Jaskier," he whispers, "and don't look back."

Jaskier can't speak, can't think, can't breathe. His whole body feels numb as the villagers pull him along. The only place he can feel anything is where the tendons in his hand are grinding against the edges of Geralt's medallion, but it's a welcome pain, a last point of connection between them.

His eyes stay glued to his witcher even as the villagers drag him forcibly away. He watches as Geralt methodically disarms and begins to remove his armor, piece by piece. Watches as his clothes follow and he lies down on the altar, as he holds himself still and docile to be chained down as Jaskier was only moments before.

They reach the stairs. Just before they pass through the doorway, Geralt turns his head and looks across the cavern at Jaskier one final time.

The cultist picks up the knife.

Jaskier screams.

They turn the corner into darkness before the knife comes down.

* * *

Jaskier flings himself against the panel where he now knows the secret door is. But they closed it securely behind them after tossing him out on his arse, and he's never seen the mechanism for opening it, so all he can do now is pound his fists on the uncaring wood. He screams curses and obscenities, tormented by visions of the gruesome acts taking place this very moment in the cavern beneath his feet. The door still doesn't budge.

At last Jaskier slides down the wall, exhausted and hopeless, to land on his knees before it. He presses his forehead and palms against it and weeps, harsh, wracking sobs. It's not only the knowledge that Geralt is going to die tonight, it's that it won't even be a clean death or a quick one. No, it's going to be slow and bloody and agonizing, and there's nothing Jaskier can do to stop it.

His head snaps up. The sobs stop, and the silence is nearly as harsh as his grief was before.

Nothing _he_ can do.

But perhaps someone else could?

Roach, in the woods to the north, Jaskier remembers. He shoves himself to his feet and runs.

His appearance, wild and disheveled after crashing thunderously through the underbrush, is enough even to give an experienced monster-hunter's unflappable steed pause. She doesn't spook or shy as an ordinary horse would, but her head comes up fast and she stares at him warily.

Jaskier can't spare a thought to care about that. He goes straight to Geralt's saddlebags and begins digging through them frantically. Gods, he hopes…

Hopes Geralt still has the little vial of amethyst smoke Yennefer had given him "for emergencies". Hopes Yennefer still gives enough of a fuck to answer the call. Hopes Yennefer will be willing and able to help. It’s been two years, after all - who knows what has or hasn’t happened between them since the mountain?

It's there still, thank all the gods. Jaskier pulls out the little crystal vial from where it had fallen all the way to the bottom of the bag. He stares at it for a long moment, then mutters, "Please be listening, and willing to come help. He'll die if you don't."

He smashes the vial against a nearby rock. The smoke billows up, far more than could've been contained in the vial alone, and curls around him. It feels…curious, almost. Like a cat twining about his legs while looking up to see what he's holding and whether it's worth trying to get some.

"Geralt has been taken by a bunch of murderous fanatics," Jaskier says, as though compelled. "They're torturing him right now, and they won't stop until it kills him, and I can't get to him to stop this. I need your help, Yennefer, please. He'll die without you. Please, Yennefer. Whatever the cost."

The smoke vanishes all at once and with a whooshing sound a portal opens behind him.

"What the _fuck_ , bard?" is all she says, eyes flashing dangerously as she steps through and lets it collapse behind her. "Explain. Now."

So Jaskier does - the town, the cult, being taken as their sacrifice, Geralt suddenly showing up and trading himself for Jaskier. Yennefer grows paler and paler as he speaks, warm brown skin blanching to an ashen hue.

When he's done she nods sharply. "How are you with a blade?" she asks.

"Decent with a dagger," Jaskier says. "A bit rusty with swords."

"Then arm yourself," she says with a sweeping gesture at Geralt's belongings. Jaskier plucks a long, rather wicked-looking dagger from the pile.

"We should go," Jaskier says as he stands up, blade in hand. "The village is a little ways away and time is sort of critically urgent right now."

Yennefer snorts inelegantly. "I can portal us straight into that fucking cavern, if you'll share your memories of it with me so I can use that as a focus."

"Oh," Jaskier says. He feels the first tendrils of her magic slipping into his mind, and suddenly something else occurs to him. "Yennefer," he says quietly, "There are children down there as well, with their parents. That's why he didn't just fight his way through. We have to be careful of them."

The sorceress levels a hard look at him. "Well, then it's lucky for all of us that I'm not Geralt, isn't it?" Jaskier opens his mouth, though he isn't sure what he's going to say. Yennefer cuts him off before he can even try. "I can either save him or worry about coddling his delicate sensibilities. I can't do both. Besides," she adds grimly, "we're about to make those children orphans, anyway, and it's going to be ugly. Keeping them alive may not be the mercy you think it is."

Jaskier finds he doesn't really have an answer for that.

The portal hums to life. Jaskier can see through it, dimly, only able to make out candlelight and a sea of robes.

"Let's go," Yennefer says brusquely.

Jaskier follows her through the portal.

* * *

Geralt can't bear to look at Jaskier directly as he makes his way toward the altar. He keeps his eyes trained on the alderman instead. Even just the _flashes_ of pain and fear and horror he glimpses on Jaskier's face from the corner of his eye are enough to make him feel sick. He won't be able to go through with this if he has to confront Jaskier's reaction head-on, and then they'll _both_ die down here, a pointless waste.

So instead he steels himself against responding to Jaskier's distress and closes the distance between himself and the fate he's chosen. It's a terrible one, an awful way to die, but if it gets Jaskier away from here and safe then it will be worth it.

Jaskier fights against the villagers who unchain him and get him up, never taking his eyes off Geralt as he struggles. Geralt is shamefully glad they don't let him go. If Jaskier reached him, touched him, made him meet the bard's eyes, he'd crumble in a heartbeat.

It's better this way, he tells himself over and over. This is how it has to be.

They start to take Jaskier away, and suddenly it all feels _real_ in a way it didn't before. Geralt has long since come to terms with the inevitability of his own death - it's part of what he does, part of what he _is_ \- but he'd always assumed it would be sudden and unexpected. Not this calculated choice, standing politely and waiting to bare his throat for the blade.

The knowledge that this is it, he's going to die here and this will be the last time he sees Jaskier, slams into him like a runaway horse.

"Wait," he says. All eyes turn to him.

He still can't bear to meet Jaskier's eyes, but there are things that need to be said. He takes off his medallion and asks the alderman - what had he heard the barkeep call him? Michal? - to give it to Jaskier. He doesn't dare get close enough to do it himself.

Geralt watches as the medallion is pressed into Jaskier's hand, and then suddenly his eyes are drawn up to Jaskier's face. The bard's features are crumpled in agony, his eyes red-rimmed and wet with tears. It only makes the blue of his irises stand out all the more beautifully.

He tells Jaskier how to get the medallion to where it belongs, so his family will know what happened and not be left wondering if he'll ever come home again. He ignores when Jaskier pleads with him not to do this, instead tells him where to find Roach. They'll take care of each other, he hopes, since he won't be able to.

He tells Jaskier to go. Begs him, really. Geralt _needs_ to know that Jaskier will be away from here, will be safe, or else it was all for nothing and he's not sure he could bear that.

There are other words, too, trapped in his throat and aching to get out. He wants, more than anything, to tell Jaskier how sorry he is for everything. How much Jaskier has meant to him, how much better his life has been for knowing him. He wants to apologize for his outburst on Niedamir's mountain, explain that he's regretted that moment of cruelty ever since.

He can't, even knowing that any words left unspoken will die here with him tonight. The words won't come, won't shape themselves into sentences that can convey meaning into another's mind, and there's no time to fight them into submission. The villagers are dragging Jaskier away already, and it's too late.

So he tears his gaze away and tries to blank out his mind. Tries not to think about what's happening as he divests himself of gear and clothing and allows them to chain him down.

The alderman - Michal picks up the knife, and Geralt's resolve cracks just a tiny bit. He turns his head and looks for Jaskier, needing to see him one more time. The bard looks frantic and anguished, but it's still him, still the face and the eyes that have haunted Geralt's dreams for the last two years.

He's glad he got to see him once more.

* * *

The fucking knife is dull. Geralt grits his teeth and focuses on his irritation at that as best he can, keeping his mind away from the slow tearing of it through his skin. It makes sense, as much as he hates to see blades ill-cared-for; this isn't meant to be a surgery, clean and careful. This is _supposed_ to hurt.

And fuck, it _does_. The knife carves a line of bloody fire down his bicep to the elbow, then across to the outer side of his arm, and begins to travel back up parallel to the first. Geralt clenches his fist as he feels hot, sticky blood beginning to drip down from the cuts. The alderman keeps the movements slow - dragging it out for maximum suffering, of course, and Geralt has the mad urge to laugh for a moment - when he returns the knife to the middle of Geralt's upper arm, between the two vertical cuts already made, and pushes the knife straight down and in. Like a stabbing, only ten times slower.

The tip of the blade scrapes the bone and Geralt almost flinches, not from the pain exactly but from the feeling of wrongness resulting from something scratching along bone. With a sudden movement, Michal twists and _wrenches_ the knife, and it doesn't cut through the muscle so much as it _tears_ it. It's a sudden explosion of pain that lances through Geralt's awareness, and it forces a growl from him before he gets himself under control again.

The next cut traces along his collarbones. The blood pools in the hollows there for a moment, before dripping back over his shoulders and soaking into his hair. After that, a set of four parallel furrows is dug into his other arm, all the way from shoulder to wrist.

Geralt clenches his jaw and tries to focus on the fact that this still doesn't touch the level of agony he remembers from the Grasses. He can cope with this. He can.

His resolve on that front wavers a little when the dull fucking blade slowly and carefully pierces his chest until it touches his sternum. The movement of each breath jostles it a little, sending fresh flashes of pain along his nerves. He holds his breath. It doesn't really help much.

The held breath escapes him in a harsh sound as the alderman drags it downward, slowly. It's clear the bastard has done this shit before, given the confidence with which he cuts in just above the vital organs that would end his little ritual too soon, deep enough to go through muscle without ever going deep enough to nick the organs beneath. Michal lifts the knife away when it reaches the bottom of Geralt's ribcage, then comes back and carves another line, across this time, bisecting the first and perpendicular to it. After that another one, at an angle, crossing the other two at their intersection, and another - creating some kind of gruesome starburst pattern across his chest, Geralt realizes dizzily. Fuck, why did he have to get a murderer with an aesthetic sense? He almost laughs.

It turns into a choked cry - not a scream, he won't give them that satisfaction, he won't - when Michal sets the knife aside and pushes his fucking fingers _into_ the ruined mess of shredded muscle that marks the centerpoint of the pattern. Geralt jerks involuntarily at the sickening sensation, chains rattling as his movement tests their strength.

They hold. He doesn’t scream. Doesn’t scream. Doesn’t...

He doesn’t scream until Michal digs his nails in and begins to - to fucking _peel back_ a V-shaped section of skin between two of the cuts he’s made, exposing the nerves and muscle beneath.

Then, he screams.

It’s a pain unlike any other he’s experienced, in all his years of living and nearly-dying at the hands of monsters and men alike. Tearing and burning and crushing and searing, every adjective he’s ever heard used to describe any kind of pain, all at once. Geralt’s vision goes white. He screams and thrashes against the restraints with his full strength, control lost to the pure animal instinct to get away, _move away_ from the thing that’s hurting him. The chains hold fast, though, and there’s nothing he can do but struggle and scream and...and suffer, like they wanted. Like he offered to do. The thought bolsters him a little, reminds him that if he weren’t enduring this, Jaskier would be. And as awful as this is...that would be far, far worse.

Dimly, barely registering through the blaze of agony that is Michal fucking skinning him alive, Geralt feels the knife taken from where Michal had laid it on his stomach, followed by a new point of fire blazing to life as some unseen second villager slices into the meat of his thigh with a jerking, sawing motion to compensate for the dullness of the blade. And that’s...it’s too much. The last vestiges of lucidity abandon him, and all he can do now is wait for it to be over.

Wait…and scream.

* * *

Jaskier tumbles out of the portal at Yennefer’s back just in time to see the two cultists bent over Geralt’s body whirl in shock at the intrusion. He doesn’t wait for Yennefer to tell him what to do. All the fury and fear and anguish coalesce into an inferno of rage in his chest and he flings himself forward without hesitation. He bears the cultist to the ground - the leader, the one who’d made that fucking bargain with Geralt in the first place - and slashes his borrowed dagger across the bastard’s throat with every ounce of strength he possesses. Arterial blood jets out and splashes across his face and he doesn’t care, almost welcomes it.

“Tell your god of suffering I said hello,” Jaskier hisses even as the man’s eyes go blank and cloudy. He shoves himself up and turns back toward the rest of the cavern, ready to cut down every single one of the fuckers who thought they could do this to him, to Geralt, to them both.

Yennefer, he sees, is already hard at work. The second person who’d been assisting the leader in whatever they’d been doing to Geralt - Jaskier very carefully _does not think_ about the specifics of that - is already dead, a smoking hole in her chest, and Yennefer is holding villagers at bay with blasts of fire and energy, more of them falling beneath each spell as she casts it.

Jaskier skirts the altar to the other side. He can’t _not_ look at Geralt as he passes by, but Yennefer has cast some kind of shield over the altar that reflects oddly, keeping him from seeing beneath it properly. He gets the impression of pale skin and red blood but nothing more than that, and then he’s past the altar and his focus shifts to the people of the village, all of them accomplices to this awful act.

It might be nice if he could say, later, that it was consideration for how many people they’ve tortured and gruesomely murdered over the years that drove him to such a level of savagery.

It wouldn’t be true, but it would be nice if it were.

In actuality, as he dives into the crowd dagger-first his head is full of nothing more than the way Geralt looked at him just before he was dragged away, and the amount of blood he glimpsed beneath Yennefer’s shield. It’s still more than enough to fuel his rage.

He winds up shoulder to shoulder with Yennefer, somehow, in front of the altar. She keeps the villagers off-balance and unable to swarm them, breaking up the crowd with her magical attacks, and the hilt of Jaskier’s dagger is slippery with blood from the ones who manage to get within reach. None of them can reach him, or if they have he doesn’t feel it.

They’re only two against two hundred or more, but one of them is a terrifyingly powerful sorceress and the other is half-mad and feral with rage, and both of them are defending someone who matters to them. Hundred-to-one odds or not, the villagers never stood a chance.

The silence that falls afterward isn’t silence, not really. It’s punctuated by the crackling of residual flames set by Yennefer’s spells, the drip of blood from the tip of Jaskier’s dagger, the harsh sounds of their breathing -

And the strained sound of Geralt’s breath behind them, wheezing slightly with low, pained sounds punctuating each exhale. They turn around, then, meeting each other’s eyes briefly - Jaskier doesn’t think he’s ever seen the sorceress look _afraid_ before. He decides he doesn’t like it. - and Yennefer drops the shield.

The carnage of his and Yennefer’s making, the charnel scent of so many violent deaths in such a small space, the smell of burned flesh - Jaskier hasn’t blinked an eye at it.

He takes one look at what those _fucking sadists_ did to his best friend and instantly stumbles back, turning away and losing the contents of his stomach over some damn villager’s still-warm corpse.

“Jaskier!” Yennefer’s voice is sharp and unforgiving. Gulping for air, Jaskier smears tears and blood away from his eyes with the sleeve of his tunic and forces himself to return to where he had been standing before.

His throat works desperately as he struggles to keep from vomiting bile at the sight before him. “What?” he manages to croak.

“We have to stabilize him before we can take him out of here. This is…” she falters a little, staring fixedly at Geralt’s face, “this is bad, even for him. I’m not a healer, Jaskier. And I’ve spent a fair bit of Chaos on the fight already. I can’t just wave my hands and make this all better.”

“So...so what do we do, then?” Jaskier knows his voice is getting shrill, but he can’t help it. “We can’t just let him…” He can’t say it. He can’t.

“We’re not,” Yennefer says fiercely. “I’m not saying that. But - and I cannot believe I’m saying this, and if you ever tell anyone, even him, that I said this I will turn you into something very small and slimy - I can’t do it alone. I need your help.”

Something in him settles at that. Jaskier feels steadier. If there’s a chance, if there’s something he can do that will make a difference… “What do you need me to do?”

* * *

Jaskier stares down at Geralt without really seeing him, as the last of Yennefer’s power fades. If he never again has to see that much of Geralt’s blood on the outside of his body, on his own hands, it will still be too soon.

Between Yennefer’s magic to heal the organ damage - Jaskier glares at the stitches raggedly crossing Geralt’s belly where they’d, what, been starting to fucking disembowel him? Who _does_ that? - Jaskier’s more prosaic doctoring with stitches and salves for most of the damage to muscles and skin, and potions to help get the blood loss under control…well. Geralt is still _alive_ , at least, which is almost more than Jaskier had dared to hope for once he’d gotten a look at what those fucking bastards had done.

At the same time there’s a sickening rush of gratitude deep in his soul, knowing that if Geralt hadn’t intervened, Jaskier would’ve been lying there to be cut apart until he died. He still doesn’t understand why Geralt did what he did, why he would sacrifice himself like that for someone he basically hates rather than letting the universe give him the one blessing he asked for and take Jaskier off his - and everyone else’s - hands for good. But Jaskier is grateful for it, and he hates himself for feeling that way when his reprieve came at such a terrible cost.

_"Jaskier."_

He jerks his head up and stares at Yennefer. She looks irritated, like this wasn't the first time she'd tried to get his attention. "Sorry. What?"

"I _said_ ," yep, definitely not the first attempt, "I have somewhere we can take him to recover. If I make us a portal, can you carry him?"

"Yes." Probably. He'll make it work. After what Geralt did for him today, and the pain he suffered because of how long it took Jaskier to find help and come back, Jaskier would kill himself trying rather than fail Geralt any further.

"Good. Come on."

She gestures the portal to life beside them. Taking a deep breath, Jaskier carefully gathers the unconscious witcher into his arms and lifts him. His muscles start trembling in protest almost immediately; he mentally tells them to stuff it and quit complaining. It doesn't really work, but he's able to take Geralt through the portal - and how is it that Geralt always manages to weigh roughly twice what he looks like he should weigh? - and set him down gently on the bed in the room Yennefer takes them to without collapsing or dropping him, so he's counting it as a win.

Yennefer looks damn near done in when she follows him through the portal, and she sits down on the edge of the bed a bit harder than Jaskier thinks she meant to. But her eyes still flash violet fire when she tells him there’s a stable in the courtyard, and she’ll create and hold one last portal for him to go back and get Roach and the rest of Geralt’s belongings.

Of course, Jaskier is a moron, and didn’t think about the fact that he was going back for Roach with his hands and clothes and everything else still fucking drenched in Geralt’s blood. She doesn’t like it one bit, and he can’t say he blames her - he doesn’t much care for it either. So it takes longer than anticipated to get Geralt’s things and bring Roach back through, not least because her reaction made _him_ think about the whole blood thing, too, and the adrenaline comedown and everything else about this awful, terrible night starts to get to him. But he eventually gets them back through the portal, which closes so fast behind them that Jaskier knows it must have been straining Yennefer badly to hold it for him. He lets out a sigh of relief and turns Roach toward the stable.

By the time she’s settled, Jaskier is stumbling and shaking, dead on his feet as he makes his way back up to the house. Yennefer intercepts him before he can get far, directing him back to Geralt’s room.

There’s a huge copper tub, of all things, in a corner of the room. It’s already full and steaming. Jaskier laughs shakily. “You always steal the nicest accommodations, witch.”

Yennefer snorts. “I prefer to think of it as taking what I’m owed, bard. But you’re welcome to sleep in the stable if it makes you feel more at home.”

Jaskier doesn’t even bother with a retort. He’s too busy stripping off bloodsoaked clothing and dumping it into a pile on the floor, intent only on getting into the tub and getting all that fucking blood _off_ him. It’s almost too hot, but that’s perfect for Jaskier just now. He snatches up a linen cloth and ball of soap from a tray beside the tub, lathers the cloth, and begins furiously scrubbing at his skin.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Yennefer’s hand lands on his shoulder, her other hand prying the cloth from his fingers. “Breathe, Jaskier,” she says. There’s no magic in her voice, but it’s a magic all its own nonetheless. He goes still, shuddering with half-suppressed sobs.

She slips into the water beside him a minute later and even though they’re not touching, the shared presence steadies him somehow. He drags in a deep, trembling breath; his hands unclench from the fists they’d tightened into underwater. He fishes the soap out from the bottom of the bath where he’d carelessly let it fall and hands it to her silently, then takes a bottle of oil soap and sets about washing his hair much more calmly than he’d attacked the blood and grime on his skin.

The only explanation Jaskier will be able to think of, later, is that the stress of the day has sent him batty. He can’t think of any other reason why, when Yennefer is finished washing her body, he shakes the bottle of oil soap at her and says, “Want me to wash your hair for you?”

The only thing more shocking than his temporarily taking leave of his senses like that is the fact that she accepts.

Yennefer sighs a little as his fingers coax a lather from the soap, rubbing across her scalp soothingly. “You’re actually good at that, bard,” she says, but the sharp edge of the words is blunted significantly by their shared exhaustion.

“I should be,” he says, lips twisting a little wryly. “Used to do this for Geralt all the time.”

“Used to?” He can hear the frown in her voice. “Did you stop for some reason?”

Jaskier freezes for a moment, then forces his hands to resume their gentle motion. “I, um. We. We stopped traveling together, after…”

He trails off awkwardly. The silence takes on a cold, cutting quality.

“Do you mean to tell me,” Yennefer says quietly, “that this was the first time you’d seen him since the day the dragon hunt went to shit?”

“Well, uh...yes, actually - wait,” he says, “you know about that?” It occurs to him, abruptly, that for all he knows Geralt and Yennefer made up the day after the hunt and have been happily back together since.

All right, happily back together is highly unlikely. Still orbiting each other warily in a sexual-tension-fueled dance and clashing occasionally in painfully passionate encounters before fleeing their burgeoning feelings again, more like. But that doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Yennefer snorts. “I heard him, bard. I hadn’t portaled away yet when he decided to take out his repressed feelings on you. But I always assumed he would’ve followed right after you and...well, maybe not apologized. This is _Geralt_ we’re talking about. But I thought he’d have done that thing where he awkwardly throws some useful item at you that could be a gift or could just be practical resupplying, without saying which it actually is, and gives you sad wolf-puppy eyes while insisting he doesn’t want or need anyone’s forgiveness.”

Jaskier chokes on a near-hysterical laugh. He can picture the exact expression she’s talking about, hear the exact growl and the precise words Geralt would use.

She laughs with him a little, then sobers. “I didn’t realize he’d driven you away and then not followed after you again. That fucking idiot.”

Something occurs to Jaskier, then. “Wait, so - you haven’t seen him since the dragon hunt, either, have you? Or you’d have already known that.”

Yennefer draws away from him and dunks into the water to rinse her hair. “No,” she says quietly. “Today was the first time I’ve seen him since that day as well.”

“You haven’t…but you still…” Jaskier flounders for words to describe his bafflement that a woman (rightfully) furious with a man who’d lied to her about something so enormous as the djinn and the wish binding them would nevertheless, two years later, come to that man’s rescue when he needed her.

She turns back around to face him. “So did you,” she points out.

Jaskier makes a face. “Yes, but we both know I’m a besotted fool with no self-respect or pride who would run after that grumpy old prick no matter what. You’re…” His voice softens. “You’re better than that.”

The thunderous frown that takes over her lovely features should frighten him, he knows, but he feels it only distantly. “You do yourself too little credit,” she says. “What you call being a besotted fool could as easily be seen as rare and precious loyalty.”

There’s something pained, almost wistful underneath her expression. Jaskier wonders if anyone has ever shown that kind of loyalty to her. He suspects he knows the answer.

He’s stunned to realize that he thinks perhaps he could give her that. Not right away, but with time…

He files that thought away for later. "So was it a similar loyalty that brought you back to help him, too?" It's the closest he can get to asking outright what's between them now.

Yennefer rolls an elegant shoulder. "Not in the same sense, exactly. I'm still very, very angry with him. But with time and distance I was able to think clearly enough to recognize that he really did make that wish in a slightly clumsy effort to protect me. I first thought…" She tightens her lips. "In my experience, a man who makes a wish like that would do so with the intent to control, to subjugate. I assumed that would be true of him as well. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he really is…different. He still should have fucking told me," she adds, and she's right. "And I am definitely owed several apologies for that. But…"

When she doesn't continue, Jaskier nudges her gently. "But?"

"I find I don't care for the idea of a world without him in it somewhere," she whispers. It sounds like a confession. Perhaps, for her, it is.

"Well," Jaskier says, “thanks to you, we don’t have to worry about that just yet.”

They both look across to the still figure on the bed, lost for the moment in their own thoughts.

“Thanks to _us_ ,” Yennefer says, finally. “Don’t sell yourself short, bard. Now come on, we all need to get some sleep.”

Exhaustion is laying heavy over him again, but more peacefully this time. He feels like he just wants to go to bed, rather than feeling like he’s about to keel over in the middle of the room. He follows Yennefer docilely enough, though he does rouse a bit to ask if she’s sure it’ll be all right for them to share the bed with Geralt - he’d hate to find he’s done his usual creeper-vine act and hurt the witcher further by putting pressure on the still-healing wounds.

She rolls her eyes. “The bed is more than big enough for three of us, but if it’ll make you feel better I’ll take the middle and keep you off him.”

Jaskier, already half asleep, mumbles, “Fair warning, that just means I’ll cling to you instead.”

Yennefer laughs, sounding not at all bothered. “Don’t worry, bard, I won’t wake you before I kill you if you get too handsy. It’ll be a peaceful death.” But she’s the one who settles against his side as if daring him to comment.

_Huh_ , Jaskier thinks just before he falls asleep. _I guess all I had to do in order to be friends was get her to kill a bunch of people with me. Should’ve done that years ago._

For all the trauma the day contained, he falls asleep with the warm weight of Yennefer beside him and the sound of Geralt’s witcher-slow breathing past that, and he thinks maybe he’s more content than he’s been in years.

* * *

Geralt wakes to warm midmorning sunshine streaming in from an open window and a startlingly survivable amount of pain.

“The fuck?” he says, or tries to. It comes out something more like “thhff,” as his mouth refuses to properly cooperate.

It’s still enough to summon two unexpected, familiar - beloved, though he doesn’t want to admit that - faces leaning over him. Yen’s presence makes no sense - how did she even find him? - but it’s Jaskier’s presence that’s genuinely frightening for a moment. The whole point of all this was to see him safely away from it and if he’s here -

Yen’s hand is on his forehead and he can feel her Chaos pressing at his frantic thoughts, dulling his reactions. On the bright side, this means he can talk to her without needing to convince his body to cooperate.

_What the fuck?_ is all he can manage at first. _Yen, how are you here - Jaskier, why is he, what happened?_

Gods, his thoughts are damn near as useless as his voice. He feels Yen’s amusement at that thought.

“We’re safe, Geralt,” is what she says instead. “All of us. Calm down.”

_That’s a hell of a request after what was happening last time I was conscious._

She actually rolls her eyes at him. “So dramatic,” she says. “Oh, _witchers don’t have emotions_ , sure. Geralt, it’s all right. Really. Neither Jaskier nor I are hurt. We’re well away from that village and its insane cult.”

He sighs with relief - then chokes on it as the excess movement sends a stab of pain like lightning radiating out from the center of his chest. Dimly he hears Jaskier’s sound of concern at the brief spasm that seizes him. Geralt tries to speak, to reassure him, but that only makes it worse somehow and a shameful whimper escapes his throat instead.

Yen’s power is there, then, pressing down over him and forcing him to stillness. It doesn’t touch the pain itself, but it keeps him from making it worse, and he pushes a sense of gratitude toward her mind.

“Jaskier,” she says, not ungently. The bard’s blue eyes snap up to meet hers. “He’s all right.”

Jaskier snorts. “Yeah, he looks it.”

Geralt would growl at him, if it wouldn’t just make the whole situation exponentially worse. So Yen does it for him.

“He’s breathing, he’s conscious, and most of his blood is on the inside. That’s about as much as you can ask for right now. He _will_ be fine, as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid like try to push himself before he’s had some time to heal further. Which I am absolutely certain he will attempt to do anyway.”

_I may not be able to talk right now, Yen, but you know I can hear you, right?_

She ignores that. Of course she does.

“You’re sure?” Jaskier whispers. He squeezes his eyes shut, looking tormented.

“I’m sure,” she says.

Jaskier opens his eyes then, and looks down to meet Geralt’s gaze. There’s something painfully raw and open in the way Jaskier looks at him. The bard reaches out a trembling hand as if to touch Geralt’s face…

And yanks back as though scalded before contact is made. He scrambles off the bed, mumbling something about checking on Roach, and all but flees the room.

Just as well Yen is magically holding him still. Geralt doesn’t want to consider how intense the pain would’ve been if he’d been able to physically react to that. Well, if he’s honest, he doesn’t want to think about what just happened _at all_. He closes his eyes, not wanting to see the look Yen is surely giving him.

She allows him silence for all of a minute and a half.

“You really did a number on him, didn’t you?” she mutters as she sends pulses of Chaos into the worst of his injuries.

He doesn’t answer. He feels like the answer ought to be pretty fucking obvious, given how Jaskier fled just now.

“He deserved better than that.”

_You both did. Both do._ He doesn’t open his eyes, but he can practically feel the sharp look she sends his way.

“We are _not_ talking about you and I right now,” she says. It’s a warning. He heeds it, for once, and falls silent internally as well as externally.

Yen continues her healing for a few minutes, then finally sits back on her heels on the bed beside him. When she neither moves nor speaks, Geralt opens his eyes and looks up at her questioningly.

“You lash out at him with a cruelty I’d never imagined you even capable of, let him walk away, spend two years staying away and not apologizing - and then your first act upon reuniting with the idiot is to offer your life in trade for his, knowing it comes at the cost of a death so gruesome even _I_ wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemies.” She both looks and sounds baffled and frustrated, well on her way to angry. “And I know you love him - oh, don’t bother trying to deny it. I don’t even have to read your mind to see it, it’s written all over you every time you look at him when you think no one else can see you. - so why the fuck didn’t you do anything before now? Were you just, what, saving it all up for the most dramatic possible moment?”

_I didn’t…I didn’t know what else to do, Yen._

She sighs heavily enough for the both of them. “Gods save me from idiot men who can’t figure out how to handle their emotions.” Her glare pierces right through him, it feels like. “Get some rest.”

Yen’s hand leaves his brow before he can respond, so as she slips off the bed and pads to the door, he takes a careful breath and manages to say, very quietly and very carefully, “Thanks, Yen.”

She pauses at the door and looks back at him, but says nothing, and then she’s gone and he’s alone.

Jaskier’s stricken look haunts him when he closes his eyes.

* * *

The instant Jaskier sets foot in the house again, after taking care of…all right, _hiding_ in Roach’s stall for most of the afternoon, Yennefer pounces. With surprising strength for her size, she tows him down the hall to the room where Geralt has been since they arrived.

“Yennefer, what the hell -”

“I am not dealing with the two of you being silently idiotic at each other any longer. You need to talk to him, and he needs to talk to you. So I’m ensuring that happens.”

Jaskier digs in his heels a little harder, for all the good it does. “Look, I don’t mean to question the almighty wisdom of a mage, but it’s not - Yennefer, I’m not ready to talk to him. He probably doesn’t even want to talk to me, anyway. Remember that whole ‘one blessing’ thing? Does that sound to you like a man who wants to have a heart-to-heart with me? Or anyone, let’s remember who we’re talking about here. I’m not…”

He yanks back against her grip with most of his strength just as she stops pulling him forward and lets go of his arm, with the result that he stumbles back off-balance. She, the damned witch, uses that to her advantage and all but shoves him staggering through the doorway while he’s still trying not to fall over. And then slams the door behind him.

He turns around and stares at it. The door opens inward, and it had been all the way open against the wall - how had she - _right_. Jaskier sighs. _Magic._

And then it hits him that she’s shut him in with Geralt, and he whips around to see gold eyes fixed on him with a baffled look. “Jaskier?”

For lack of anything more inspired to say, Jaskier says, “Ah, fuck.”

“Why did Yen throw you in here?” The deep voice is perhaps a little rougher than usual, but steady, which is a relief after the scene earlier.

Jaskier slumps back against the closed door with a thump and sighs. “She said we need to talk.”

The look in the witcher’s eyes goes from confusion to near-panic in an instant. Jaskier chokes an almost hysterical laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought!” he says shrilly. He turns and hits the door, shouting through it, “I told you he didn’t want to talk, Yennefer, now let me out!”

Interesting. Until that moment, he hadn’t known that the silence of someone’s complete absence from a conversation could sound unimpressed.

“Jaskier…” Geralt sounds wary.

“Well, I guess this is happening, then,” Jaskier says.

Geralt stares at him, badly wishing he could be literally anywhere but here.

Jaskier fixes him with a terrifyingly clear stare and steps away from the door.

“What the _fuck_ , Geralt?”

He doesn’t really have an answer to that, so he doesn’t bother to try. Besides, he remembers what Jaskier looks like in the warm-up to a rant, and this has all the signs of one during which his input will not be wanted or appreciated. So he simply waits.

“You break my heart to pieces and piss on the remains that day on the mountain, and then no contact, no attempt to fucking apologize for any of it - I don’t see you for _two fucking years_ , thinking I wasted two decades of my life on a man who secretly fucking hated me the whole time. And then the first time I see you again you’re offering to trade your life for mine, volunteering yourself for a gruesome death just to save me the same fate. So tell me, witcher, how the fuck am I supposed to reconcile these two things? You hate and resent me, but you come to save me from some murderous cult. Your dearest wish is for life to take me off your hands, but in order to save my life you’re willing to let yourself be -”

Jaskier cuts off abruptly, gesturing at the red lines of healing wounds that carve across Geralt’s body. He can’t seem to bring himself to say it. Geralt can’t blame him. It’s really not a nice word.

So he’s not sure why he fills in that particular blank for them, dryly says, “Vivisected, yeah. I remember it. I was there.”

Geralt instantly regrets it when Jaskier flinches at the reminder.

“Yes,” the bard spits, turning away. “That.” He walks to the window and stands for a long moment, arms wrapped around himself and leaning his forehead on the glass.

“I don’t understand, Geralt.” Jaskier whispers it so softly that even Geralt’s senses barely pick it up. “Do you hate me? Do you actually care about me? I honestly can’t tell. Maybe I was just one more noble rescue mission for you. Maybe you’d let yourself be killed that way for any helpless squishy human you found under those circumstances.” He laughs wetly. “That’s probably it. You’re fundamentally incapable of _not_ sacrificing yourself for any endangered human who crosses your path. It just happened to be me this time.”

Geralt can’t stand the resignation in Jaskier’s voice, the dullness drowning out his spirit. Slowly and carefully, he begins to ease himself out of bed. He winces when he pushes up to standing - the damage was significant even by his standards, and he’s nowhere near healed yet, though a day’s rest and another round of potions has helped enough that he’s capable of moving a little at least, unlike when he woke that morning.

But Jaskier is hurting, and letting himself believe he doesn’t matter, and Geralt can’t let him do that. So he takes small, shuffling steps, rigidly controlling his breathing to try to keep the pain under control. It doesn’t help much, but he makes it across the span of floor between the bed and the window without falling, and that’s all he was really hoping for.

He reaches out a hand and brushes his fingers over Jaskier's shoulder. "Jaskier, I -"

Jaskier whips around so fast he overbalances and stumbles. Geralt instinctively lunges to catch him before he can fall, only he doesn't have the strength for that kind of shit right now and he winds up stumbling as well. Fresh agony blazes to life along the faultlines left behind by the cultists' knives and he gasps, then can't suppress a sharp sound of pain when his chest collides with Jaskier's side.

By sheer dumb luck they stay upright, their wobbling having gone in the direction of the wall rather than the floor. Unfortunately this does mean that Jaskier is slightly squished between wall and witcher, but it's still better than an actual fall.

Or at least, Geralt assumes it is, and if he's right he doesn't even want to _think_ about how bad the pain would've been if they'd fallen.

"Geralt, what the _fuck?"_ Jaskier says for the second time in as many minutes. At least this time he sounds appalled rather than tormented. That's an improvement, right?

Still struggling to draw breath and think through the sharp singing of his damaged nerve endings, Geralt lets himself lean into Jaskier, who has - apparently without noticing - looped an arm around his back to help steady him. Geralt wraps an arm around Jaskier’s waist in turn, needing the extra support more than he likes to admit. "You were…hurting," he finally manages to grind out. "Couldn't let you keep thinking what you were thinking. Had to tell you…" He loses the thread of the words, then. He drops his head onto Jaskier's shoulder and lets his eyes fall shut, focusing on breathing through the pain.

"And you couldn't tell me whatever you wanted to tell me from over there?" Jaskier sounds incredulous.

"Could've," Geralt says without moving. "You wouldn't have…felt it the same way though."

He can hear the furrow in Jaskier's brow. "What does that even mean?"

"You're…" Geralt taps his fingers against the small of Jaskier's back. "Touch matters to you. Did you think I…never noticed?"

"You hauled yourself out of bed in that condition and tried to fucking _walk_ , just because you thought it would help me hear what you wanted to say?" There's an odd sort of despairing fondness in his voice. "You, sir, are a fucking menace. Come on. Let's get you back to bed, and then I will sit within arm's reach so that the urge to touch me doesn't endanger your recovery further while you tell me whatever it is you wanted to tell me."

Good enough. Geralt entrusts most of his weight to Jaskier as they move and marvels, again, at how easily he bears it. He dresses like a pampered dandy, but there is real muscle hidden under all that silk and foppish mannerisms.

By the time they get him back into bed he's trembling all over and fighting the urge to just pass out again. It's only the fact that he can't bear to leave Jaskier hanging at this delicate point in the conversation that keeps him conscious.

Jaskier sits on the edge of the bed and gives Geralt his hand, easily, when he reaches for it. "Now, you moron, what was so terribly important to say that you risked tearing yourself apart all over again for it?" The words are scolding but there's softness in Jaskier’s eyes.

"I hadn't planned on stopping in that town at all," Geralt tells him.

Jaskier gives him a blank look. "All right…?" It's clear he doesn't understand what Geralt is getting at.

"If they'd taken anyone else, that person would've died. I wasn't after the cult, or searching after rumors of a monster. I was just passing through."

"So why _did_ you stop?"

"I went into the tavern for a drink and something to eat. I saw your lute propped up behind the bar. I asked about it and they lied, stinking of fear. I knew something was wrong, something involving you. And I couldn't just leave, knowing that. So I stayed and searched for you. I had no reason to stay there, except that I feared for what they might have done to you."

Jaskier is silent, chewing on his lip and staring intently at their linked hands.

"I didn't stumble upon you by accident. I stayed and investigated and _found_ you, came for you because I needed to make sure you were safe. _You_ , Jaskier. Not just any human who might've gone missing in that town. _You_."

"Why did you never try to apologize?" Jaskier whispers it without looking up. "If you really cared, why did you stay away so long? We could have talked things out, if you were willing to at least try to apologize."

Shame clogs Geralt's throat. He has to force the words out past it, and they come out even rougher than usual because of that.

"I didn't know how."

Jaskier blinks. "Most people just start with 'I'm sorry' and take it from there."

"This was too big and too important for a simple 'I'm sorry'," Geralt counters. "I didn't know how to apologize the way I wanted to. It's - when I try to say things, important things, they come out wrong. They always have. So I stopped trying and by now it's like a muscle that's atrophied from long disuse. I didn't have the slightest idea where to start in apologizing to you as you deserved."

There are tears shining in Jaskier's eyes, but he simply squeezes Geralt's hand and lets him continue.

"I…show things. Through actions. Not words. And this…I wanted to get you safely away from those mad bastards and their knives, but I also hoped that maybe, finally, I could show you how much you matter to me."

"'I'm sorry' was too small an apology, so the next step is human sacrifice? That…" Jaskier sighs, but there's a huff in there that sounds suspiciously like laughter. "Yeah, that sounds like your logic, all right."

They fall quiet for a minute or two, both looking down at where their hands meet between them. Geralt rubs his thumb back and forth over Jaskier's knuckles, feeling strangely fidgety compared to his usual even calm.

"I am, though," he says at last.

"Hm?" Jaskier tilts his head but doesn't quite look up, as though if he looks away from their clasped hands they'll disappear.

"Sorry," Geralt clarifies. "I'm sorry, Jaskier. I…wish I hadn't said any of that. I've regretted it ever since."

Jaskier finally looks up and meets his eyes, teary-eyed and vulnerable looking. "You didn't mean it?"

"Of course I didn't mean it," Geralt says immediately. "I was - Yen had just walked away, and Borch kept after me about the whole destiny thing, and I was furious with both of them and myself but there was nothing I could really do about any of it. And I snapped and took it out on you instead, because I didn't know what else to do."

Jaskier nods, then fixes Geralt with an almost terrifyingly pointed stare. "Speaking of that situation. Have you tried to apologize to Yennefer yet?"

Geralt winces. "I…no. Not yet. She's still…I don't think she's ready to hear it from me yet."

"You're right, I'm not."

The two men both turn and stare at Yennefer, lounging against the doorframe and giving them an inscrutable look, though neither of them had heard the door open. Neither of them dares to speak.

She cocks her head and says, "But I'm starting to think that, someday, I might be."

That was more than Geralt had hoped for from her. "Anytime, Yen," he says quietly. "Just say the word."

The sorceress looks at them a moment longer, then nods and turns to leave without another word.

"Oh, you give me all this bollocks about not knowing how to apologize properly but she gets an immediate 'anytime you want', does she?" Jaskier gripes. It's meant to sound joking, but Geralt can hear a note of uncertainty under it.

"It's…different," he says lamely, and he knows it's a shitty response but _fucking words._ How can he quantify what Yen is to him, versus what Jaskier is, and how important they both are but in such different ways?

Jaskier scoffs a little, and Geralt knows he has to at least try.

"It's not that you're…less important," he manages to say. "But it's…simpler. With Yen. What we are to each other, how I fucked things up with her. It's straightforward. But you…" Geralt huffs out a sigh of frustration. "You're complicated, Jaskier. You've been so many things to me over such a period of time, and I fucked that up in so many different ways that I didn't know where to even begin." He shrugs a little, then winces as the motion pulls on his wounds. "So I took the coward's way out. I hid from it."

“So what am I to you, now?” Jaskier wants to bite his tongue off the second the words leave his lips. He hadn’t meant to ask, and now he’s afraid the answer will be ‘important...as a friend’. Which he’s always sort of known would be the case, given Geralt’s total lack of response to any and all attempts at flirting or propositioning him, but…it’s different, somehow, to have it confirmed in words, and Jaskier is not at _all_ prepared for that confirmation right now.

“Important,” Geralt says promptly. “Someone I would sooner die than see hurt. I don’t…” He sighs. “I don’t know how to do…this.”

“How to do what?” Jaskier asks, heart in his throat. He wonders if Geralt can see it as well as hear it.

“How to love you. How to love you the way you want to be loved, the way you deserve to be loved.”

For a moment Jaskier can’t breathe, can’t think. He stares into the golden, slit-pupiled eyes that have haunted his dreams for almost a quarter of a century now, and it’s as though he can reach across the space between them, through those eyes, and pluck the thoughts directly from Geralt’s mind.

_You love me?_

_Yes, I do._

A wave of tenderness washes over and through him, and Jaskier relinquishes his grip on Geralt’s hand, shifting closer on the bed so that he can reach out and cup his beloved’s face. “It’s all right. If you don’t know, then I’ll teach you, darling.”

Geralt smiles at him, unexpected and sweet. “All right, then. Teach me.”

Jaskier laughs, feeling lighter than he has in years. “We’ll start with the basics. There are three very important words you must start with -”

“Fuck off, bard?” The sweet smile has grown into a teasing grin.

Jaskier gives a dramatic gasp. “Rude!”

“Sorry. Hm. Damn it, Jaskier?”

“You are unbelievable.”

Suddenly Geralt reaches for him, slips a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him in for a kiss.

“And yet,” he murmurs against Jaskier’s lips, “here we are.”

Jaskier lets out a laugh that’s more like a sob and kisses him again. “Yes,” he agrees. “Here we are.”


End file.
